Category Archives: Twitter

It’s been so busy the last week and I have been so incredibly sick that I never posted this last week. Â Since a bunch of you have asked how our mini-vacation went, here is the summaryâ€¦ just really late.

On Thursday morning we got up early, checked out the highway conditions and headed out to Calgary for the weekend.

It was Oliver’s first long road trip and we packed pretty well. Â In his backpack he had his VTech tablet and some kid’s volume controlled headphones as well as a cheap set of binoculars. Â Mark had his PSP and a National Geographic History magazine. Â The end result is that we stopped in Kindersley (for a 5 Hour Energy Drink for me), Hanna (for windshield washer fluid), Drumheller (to take Oliver for a walk up the giant dinosaur) and the boys were remarkably good.

The trip took up around 6 1/2 hours which is pretty good but like I said, our stops were quick. Â The stop at Drumheller took the longest and Oliver wasn’t that thilled with the idea of running up the “butt of a dinosaur” and I carried him most of the 100 steps to it’s mouth. Â

After heading back down, we were off to Calgary and checked into our hotel at around 2:30 p.m. Calgary time.Â

The hotel was the Best Western Plus Calgary Centre Inn and was quite nice. Â Our room was massive and the photos on their site don’t do justice to how nice the pool area is. Â They have a normal pool, a hot tub but also a small pool that is only 2 feet deep for kids. Â Oliver loved, “his pool” and spent all of his time in it. Â They also have a free continental breakfast that was varied enough that we didn’t get sick of it. Â Of course it’s central location meant that it was out of the way of everywhere we wanted to go but not so far out of the way we didn’t go.

All day on Twitter, Mayor Nenshi was warning of the snowfall which we didn’t really notice until we hit Chestermere and the highway was closed because of a rollover. Â I am not sure what happened as we didn’t find the highways that slippery. Â There was some black ice but nothing that bad; then again I am used to driving in it.

We were two long blocks away from the 39th Street LRT station and took it downtown where we went for a long walk. Â We had plans to head up the Calgary Tower but visibility was really poor so we just took in downtown Calgary. Â The snow was really coming down but all over downtown were snow removal crews sweeping sidewalks and streets even as the snow fell which is quite a bit different than Saskatoon which puts the onus on store owners who may or may not shovel out downtown. Â It’s almost as Calgary’s downtown is a place of commerce.

That night we headed back, checked out the pool and ordered in from Mother’s Pizza, something that I have done since I was old enough to know what pizza was.

Friday morning the roads in Calgary were reported to be in bad shape but in reality were quite good. Â Thanks to Saskatoon for lowering my expectations for snow removal. Â Mark spent the summer and fall saving up for a new iPod Nano and despite being $4 short that I kicked in for him, we went to the Apple Store in Chinook Centre where a clerk named Jazz managed to help him pick out the one he wanted.

While Mark and Jazz finished the deal, Wendy pulled out her Samsung Galaxy and started to text something. Â She was lucky she wasn’t tossed out. Â As we were leaving, Wendy had a minor fit as she saw a Lego store and insisted that we had to purchase some Lego for Oliver for Christmas. Â Long story short, Wendy always wanted Lego as a kid and never had any. Â She had more fun than any of us in there.

As soon as we hit Highway #1, roads were perfect until we hit the Banff National Park gates and they never got the snow the rest of us got so it was a fun trip up with lots of stories and sight seeing along the way. Â We went straight to Sulphur Mountain and took the gondola to the top of it. Â Excited does not describe the reaction of Oliver and Mark who loved every second of the nine minute trip to the summit. Â Once at the summit I was tempted to hike to the science station but it was blowing and cold up there so we ordered a bite to eat and chilled out at the top.

Once back down we did some shopping and Banff didn’t disappoint. Â Every single shop had the exact same touristy junk. Â As I told Wendy, I spent most of my life trying to buy something nice in Banff and failed. Â Wendy found some earrings and found some Christmas gifts. Â Mark managed to get some more money out of me and bought some magnetic rocks and a Gondola souvenir. Â The highlight of the shopping was a large male elk meandering through main street and within inches of the car.

I personally love Banff in the off season and hate it during the peak season. Â The lack of tourists and crowds are nice, even if the weather is not. Â What I loved about Banff is that there was absolutely no trace of snow along their main street. Â Every flake was removedâ€¦ again, it’s a place of commerce.

Finally we took the boys to Bow Falls where a combination of the cold, wind and humidity almost froze Wendy, Mark and I to death while taking some photos. Â Oliver just said, “I want to wait in the car”

As we were leaving, we went to Walsh’s Candy Store where I bought Mark and Oliver two massive jawbreakers and challenged them to finish them by the time we got to Calgary. Â It’s an impossible task (knowing first hand) but neither one of them talked all the way back to Calgary. Â I love it when a plan comes together.

Saturday morning we met our good friend Dave King at Nellie’s where we had a good talk about politics, urban planning, cycling and photography all over a fantastic breakfast. Â It was cold out that day so instead of going to the Calgary Zoo, we went back downtown and checked out Mountain Equipment Co-op (twice), the Calgary Tower, Glenbow Museum, and snagged some milkshakes at Peter’s Drive-Thru.

While at Mountain Equipment Co-Op, we did some Christmas shopping and Wendy agonized over which bag to purchase (which she always does). Â She finally got one of theseÂ and seems at peace with the world. Â Meanwhile I got a sleeve for the MacBook, a left handed sling pack, some gloves, bike lockÂ (as well as one for Mark) and a lantern. Mark also bought a sling pack which means that we kind of match which is awkward. Â At least his is right handed.

The Calgary Tower is always amazing and we spent a lot of time up there. Â The glass floor was fun as people were absolutely terrified to walk out on it while kids seemed to not even notice. Â Both Wendy and I took a bunch of photos with other people’s cameras while they stood out on the glass. Â We went back downstairs and across the street to the Glenbow Museum where Mark really had a good time. Â Wendy enjoyed the section on the National Energy Program and on Peter Lougheed. Â It was weird to see a display honouring Preston Manning and not Joe Clark or Ralph Klein. Â I know Manning has significance but so does Clark and Klein.

Saturday night against my better wishes, we went to Swiss Chalet. Â Wendy and the boys had never gone but the meal was what you expect of Swiss Chalet. Â Personally I am still bitter that St. Hubert is not in Calgary. Â Sadly everyone in the family like the meal which means that I am going to have to fight not to go back.

Sunday we drove back home after some more running around. Â The trip was quick as I had two boys chilling out to their iPods and sucking on jawbreakers. Â The only excitement was when we were back in Saskatoon city limits when we found out again that snow removal baffles our fair city.

Life on the net can be hard. Itâ€™s human nature to want to be liked, and to feel bad when someone says something negative to you. And if itâ€™s one thing we all know about the internet, itâ€™s that at any moment, someone, somewhere, is saying something negative.

An easy solution would be to withdraw, to not participate at all. But the world is getting more digital, not less. Eventually we wonâ€™t have a choice: if we want any kind of social life, weâ€™ll have to participate in the social web.

Another solution would be to develop a thicker skin. And while Iâ€™ve certainly done that over the years, I never want to become so callous that I just donâ€™t care about anything. I want to be able to be myself in the world.

So the solution Iâ€™ve come to is this: I care a lot about a very small group of people. I maintain a hierarchy of who I need to be okay with. It starts with my wife Heather, my parents and my sister, and includes my clients and a very short list of friends. You know whoâ€™s not on that list? Anonymous internet commenters. For them and everyone else not on the list, I just try to remember a saying I heard once: â€œYour opinion of me is none of my business.â€

If youâ€™re reading this, chances are, youâ€™re not on that list, and Iâ€™m sorry if that hurts your feelings. But the truth is, Iâ€™m probably not on your list, either. Itâ€™s okay if our hearts are not yet big enough to include everyone they deserve.

He manages it this way

If you use Twitter, you pay attention to your mentions â€“ the tweets that include @yourusername â€“ because thatâ€™s how you have conversations. And therein lies the problem, because anyone can tweet at you that way. Some of those people are batshit crazy like the Haight Street Guy, while others are just merely rude like the Conference Talker Guy.

The difference is, on Haight Street, you have to walk briskly away and hope youâ€™re not followed. And at the conference, you have to de-escalate the conversation politely, in front of a crowd. But on Twitter, there is a magic button, and in one click, poof, the crazy is gone.

Itâ€™s a wonderful thing. A thing so lovely I often find myself wishing it existed in real life.So why is blocking such a taboo?

I think the Block function on sites like Twitter and Flickr is unfortunately named. Thereâ€™s something about the word â€“ Block! â€“ that comes across as a personal insult. And thatâ€™s too bad, because itâ€™s basically the only tool we have to effectively manage our social experience in those communities.

I propose that blocking people on sites like Twitter or Flickr should not be interpreted as an insult. I propose that itâ€™s simply taking yourself out of someone elseâ€™s attention stream.

If I block you on Twitter, my tweets no longer show up in your timeline. If I block you on Flickr, my photos no longer show up on your contacts page. In these settings, this is the only way for me to remove myself from your attention.

I donâ€™t know what Derek defines as his breaking point. Over the years I have left a couple of comments on both his and Heatherâ€™s Flickr and Twitter streams that have been sometimes ignored and sometimes replied to but I havenâ€™t been blocked. I tend to do the same thing although I fall more on the ignore side of the things which doesnâ€™t mean I donâ€™t care but it often means I have nothing to say back. Itâ€™s how Twitter works. I hadnâ€™t thought of it that much until someone that I know unknowingly posted something fairly offensive on my Twitter stream and I was going to reply when I realized that I didnâ€™t care what this person thought of my views so I hit â€œblockâ€. I used to do it quite a bit on my blog but a combination of blocking those that just want to argue and not posting very much eliminated the need.

I get a lot of criticism and feedback at work. I work with the hard to house and many have significant anger issues along with a variety of social disorders. When they donâ€™t get their way, they generally comment on my weight, my intelligence, my faith, being bald, and being ugly. It happens day in and day out but at the end of the day I can go home and relax. To log in and get it day in and day out when all I want to do is a little reading and writing is absurd. By blocking you, I remove my offensive views from your attention and we are both happier. My piece of the internet is free from inane comments, your net is free of my views that bother you so much. There is such a thing as win/win and itâ€™s found by clicking block.

Powazek talks of the need to stay reconciled with some people but I find that those people donâ€™t take stupid potshots online. The other thing is that there is a difference between being close to someone and having to interact with them online. Facebook and myself donâ€™t get along that well. It doesnâ€™t mean that I donâ€™t like people who choose to interact there, it just means that I choose not to interact with them there. Same with online. On Twitter I choose who I follow but I can also choose who I want to follow me and I am realizing more and more, I donâ€™t want all people interacting with me there. I realize that some people that are normal in person are jerks online. If you donâ€™t like it, I think I just said, I donâ€™t really care.

As SaskTel winds down CDMA coverage in Saskatchewan, I need to upgrade Markâ€™s cell phone (a LG Rumor 2) that he loves. He is on a cheap pre-paid plan with Virgin that I donâ€™t want to upgrade or add data so I will keep with a feature phone, probably a LG Rumor Plus or a Samsung Gravity 3. Itâ€™s talk, text, and email which is really all Mark needs right now.

I have been thinking about what I need ever since RIMâ€™s network when down last summer. This is how I am thinking. I had a Blackberry Curve 8530 and like a lot of smartphone users, I have everything flowing through that phone.

I got a fair amount of work done and even wrote a couple of columns with it. It worked really well for me until that outage. When Blackberry went down, so did my phone. I couldnâ€™t get calls, I couldnâ€™t even connect to a Wifi network. My phone was essentially a brick that I carried around and hoped would return. While it wasnâ€™t the reason I switched a Samsung Galaxy Ace over Christmas (the cost of the new Curveâ€™s were high on Koodo and didnâ€™t seem to offer a lot more capability as well as my general lack of faith in the Blackberry platform) I essentially swapped out RIM for being totally dependent on Google and this week I had an uncomfortable realization about how totally dependent I am on Google.

I was one of the first bunch of Gmail users way back in 2004, back in the days where invites were limited to five per person and where actually being sold for money. I got one, used my five invites on Wendy and some friends. Gmail was so new and fresh it had that new email smell to it. It served me well until this year when I got a notice that my email had been accessed by someone using an IP address from Serbia. It was really unsettling because as I had a decent password and changed it periodically. Having not travelled to Serbia recently (or ever) the idea that I had been hacked was a horrible one.

As for my ID, you have your drivers license, your passport, your Saskatchewan Health Card, your Social Insurance Number but my email is just as big of a part of my ID as anything. I have used it to sign up for Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, PayPal, even my bank and credit card uses it to communicate with me. While I am careful, having everything exposed was not that pleasant and it resulted in new credit cards being issues, new passwords, and really all new everything.

Shortly after that I had a huge problem with email. Emails were missing and there was about a 1500 email hole from about a year before that I discovered. I wasnâ€™t the only one that has had this happen to me. The Gmail help forums are full of users that have lost thousands of emails and no one really knows why.

Since then there is someone that I will email periodically at The StarPhoenix that occasionally doesnâ€™t acknowledge the email. I am the same way so I never thought of it until Friday when I got a call from my editor to see why I never filed my column except I did on Wednesday. I resent the column and it appeared. Itâ€™s the second time it happened but I have long had these sneaking suspicions that it was a problem with the @thestarphoenix.com domain. I checked the Gmail help forum and it tells me that I need to check with the domain name that wasnâ€™t getting my email as they are of course faultless. Of course the email was never received.

This isnâ€™t the first time this happened. A friend used to work at USA Today. An email I sent him took a full year one time to show up. I was working somewhere else and using their email (which was served up on Dreamhost) was the only server they ever had a problem with and then only sometimes. It has happened to me before from SaskTel where an email just hung out for month before being delivered. It happens but how do you know it happens. I never got a bounce message in any of those situations so I assumed (incorrectly) that it had gone through. Maybe we need to downgrade to Eudora 3 and start sending read receipts again.

So on Friday, my email was down, my cell phone was acting erratic (I think the problem was Koodo) and I realize that when things go down, they really go down. What can you do about it?

Gmail

Leaving Gmail is really hard because I think we underestimate how much spam and email that we get and I really donâ€™t want that to make it to my phone. I know SaskTel has web access but so many friends of mine have had their email account become totally full after a couple of days that it is pointless if you are a heavy email user. I can set up a 500mb account for myself on Dreamhost but I get thousands of spam a day and Gmail handles it better than anyone else. I am in the process of putting coop AT jordoncooper.com to rest which will cut back on some of the spam but itâ€™s a big problem when you are have old email accounts. There are a lot of things that still use it, including some that I am sure I donâ€™t remember but will need someday.

But since Gmail added OAuth support in March 2010, an increasing number of startups are asking for a perpetual, silent window into your inbox.

Iâ€™m concerned OAuth, while hugely convenient for both developers and users, may be paving the way for an inevitable privacy meltdown.

For most of the last decade, alpha geeks railed against â€œthe password anti-pattern,â€ the common practice for web apps to prompt for your password to a third-party, usually to scrape your e-mail address book to find friends on a social network. It was insecure and dangerous, effectively training users how to be phished.

The solution was OAuth, an open standard that lets you grant permission for one service to connect to another without ever exposing your username or password. Instead of passwords getting passed around, services are issued a token they can use to connect on your behalf.

If youâ€™ve ever granted permission for a service to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account, youâ€™ve used OAuth.

This was a radical improvement. Itâ€™s easier for users, taking a couple of clicks to authorize accounts, and passwords are never sent insecurely or stored by services who shouldnâ€™t have them. And developers never have to worry about storing or transmitting private passwords.

But this convenience creates a new risk. Itâ€™s training people not to care.

Itâ€™s so simple and pervasive that even savvy users have no issue letting dozens of new services access their various accounts.

Iâ€™m as guilty as anyone, with 49 apps connected to my Google account, 80 to Twitter, and over 120 connected to Facebook. Others are more extreme. Samuel Cole, a developer at Kickstarter, authorized 148 apps to use his Twitter account. NYC entrepreneur Anil Dash counted 88 apps using his Google account, with nine granted access to Gmail.

This is where it gets nerve wracking.

You may trust Google to keep your email safe, but do you trust a three-month-old Y Combinator-funded startup created by three college kids? Or a side project from an engineer working in his 20 percent time? How about a disgruntled or curious employee of one of these third-party services?

Any of these services becomes the weakest link to access the e-mail for thousands of users. If oneâ€™s hacked or the list of tokens leaked, everyone who ever used that service risks exposing his complete Gmail archive.

The scariest thing? If the third-party service doesnâ€™t discover the hack or chooses not to invalidate its tokens, you may never know youâ€™re exposed.

The reliability isnâ€™t just a Gmail issue but most of us switched to Gmail because it was run by Google and we never thought that we would have these issues.

The other issue with Google is that even though they post an Apps Dashboard to let you know how things are going, this is a multi-billion dollar company with no way to contact them unless you are a large customer. I have had Gmail down and nothing shows up on the Dashboard so it has to be a big outage to report it. Thatâ€™s fine if you are affected with others but if you are not part of a giant collective of frustrated Gmail users losing control on Twitter, what recourse do you have. Google tells you to that they look at help forums but there are thousands of unresolved issues, some that go on for a long time. This isnâ€™t unique to Google, a friend had a nightmare in getting locked out of his Twitter account because of a Twitter database error. It look a couple of months to resolve and that was even after itâ€™s CEO got involved. At least you can contact Dick Costello, who do you contact anymore at Google?

It’s not really a secret, per se, but there’s a quiet understanding among many iOS app developers that it is acceptable to send a user’s entire address book, without their permission, to remote servers and then store it for future reference. It’s common practice, and many companies likely have your address book stored in their database. Obviously, there are lots of awesome things apps can do with this data to vastly improve user experience. But it is also a breach of trust and an invasion of privacy.

I did a quick survey of 15 developers of popular iOS apps, and 13 of them told me they have a contacts database with millons of records. One company’s database has Mark Zuckerberg’s cell phone number, Larry Ellison’s home phone number and Bill Gates’ cell phone number. This data is not meant to be public, and people have an expectation of privacy with respect to their contacts.

So while I am giving all of my contact information to Google intentionally, I (and so are most of you) am un-intentionally giving up your contact information to developers (sorry about that) which is one of the reasons why there is so much spam in this world. Thanks Apple. So even if Google is protecting our private information, as soon as we sync it with our iPhone or iPad, it is compromised.

This brings up my next issue, which phone vendor can we trust? Apple allows people to download your most private of personal information, Google controls and ties it all together in an Android phone, with Blackberry you just have a crappy phone experience and does anyone expect Windows 7 Phone to be any better. RIM has better security but isnâ€™t able to deliver on their phones.

I was talking to a businessman who has been tied to his phone since AGT came out with the Aurora (such old technology, Google doesnâ€™t even know about it) and he said to me the other day that he was willing to ditch his smart phone and go back to a flip phone (or a feature phone so he could text his kids). His company email server was down and he couldnâ€™t do â€œanythingâ€ and was frustrated in the same way we all get frustrated. He said with a regular cell phone, when it went down, all it did was affect his phone calls. Now when his smartphone isnâ€™t working, it affects everything. He was actually in the process of heading to Midtown Mall and purchase a cheap phone so as he put it, at â€œleast I can call someoneâ€. In some ways as I looked at a Nokia C1 by Fido today I wondered if this may be what I really want, an update to the Nokia 1100 which is still the worldâ€™s most popular phone.

Koodoâ€™s cellular service is okay here in Saskatoon. They use Telusâ€™ network and do a not bad job of staying active. I find that when SaskTel is having problems, so is Telus/Koodo which makes me feel somewhat better but not a lot. In other words when I get no service at my house, neither does anyone else using SaskTel, Telus, or Virgin. When Koodoâ€™s network is acting up, I can tell by looking at my phone when something is wrong. My Foursquare check-in options revolve around Carlton Universityâ€™s campus, my network says Telus or even SaskTel instead of Koodo, and my calls drop more than they should. Wireless is defined by itâ€™s Ready, Shoot, Aim background and we shouldnâ€™t be surprised with itâ€™s technical difficulties considering the rate that technology is changing but more and more I keep wondering if a step back may be order and evaluate if I want all of my personal information being in a platform that is so easily exploited.

I could come off the cloud but that is a lot easier said than done. I could use Thunderbird for email and contacts and Lightning as a calendar. I could use Dreamhostâ€™s IMAP server, keep my email off my phone, and ditch my iPad, or at least not sync up information with it. It can be done but it is a very different 1998 era web that I donâ€™t think I want to go back to either.

When you think of the information you have in your Gmail account, address book, calendar, and other apps (think of Mint and your bank app on your phone), why arenâ€™t we either demanding more security or at least taking steps to protect ourselves. I know RIMâ€™s the most secure but their phones are terrible right now. I wonder if the next thing in wireless will not just be the cool apps but the cool apps that protect your data because right now my data isnâ€™t feeling all that safe.

I had wanted to upgrade Wendyâ€™s Samsung Link for a while now as Virgin Mobile has had some entry level Android smartphones out for a while. Every time I went out and looked, they were sold out. I finally tracked one down today at Best Buy and decided to pick up a Samsung Galaxy 550. Itâ€™s not cutting edge but it runs Foursquare, Twitter, Angry Birds, Flickr, and a bunch of other apps pretty well while being a lot cheaper than an iPhone. While I donâ€™t think it will make me want to give up my Blackberry, itâ€™s a pretty decent little phone. The bad part is now our competition on Foursquare is heating up.

The other day in the hospital, Mark complained to me about his Twitter user name. He doesnâ€™t like @coopermark and said it looked stupid. I replied to him that others have that form of username. When pressed who I was referring to, I said Warren Kinsellaâ€™s username on Twitter is @kinsellawarren. Mark asked who Kinsella was and I said, he helps Liberalâ€™s win elections. Mark replied with, â€œSo he hasnâ€™t done much lately.â€

When rallies erupted in January, they were at first largely tribal affairs in the impoverished Bedouin villages where King Abdullah recruits his forces. But as they spread to Amman, the capital, and to other towns, other disgruntled Jordanians, including Islamists, teachers and leftists, have jumped on the bandwagon.

Not sure if King Abdullahâ€™s plan for dealing with the crisis works

In response, the king at first increased the meagre government pensions and salaries by 20 dinars ($28) a month; few of the beneficiaries sounded grateful. Then, on January 31st, he sacked his government, a time-honoured Jordanian device for fobbing off protest. The new prime minister, Marouf Bakhit, comes from the same Bedouin and military stock as most of the protesters. In a previous stint as prime minister, he placated his Bedouin troops by raising their salaries. Muhammad Sneid, who organised the first rural protest in the town of Dhiban, cheered the appointment of one of his own.

The State Department is tightening its embrace of Twitter and other social media as crises grip the Middle East and Haiti, with officials finding new voice, cheek and influence in the era of digital diplomacy.

Even as it struggles to contain damage caused by WikiLeaks’ release of classified internal documents, the department is reaching out across the Internet. It’s bypassing traditional news outlets to connect directly and in real time with overseas audiences in the throes of unrest and upheaval.

American diplomacy isn’t a newcomer to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr or Twitter, but it has stepped up online efforts as those networks play a growing role in events around the world.

In recent days, department spokesman P.J. Crowley has tweeted to knock down rumors, amplify U.S. policy positions, appeal for calm and urge reforms in Haiti, Tunisia and Lebanon.

Well before he addressed the State Department press corps on the return to Haiti of former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and the possible return of ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide, Crowley took to Twitter to pronounce the U.S. position

"We are surprised by the timing of Duvalier’s visit to Haiti," he wrote last Monday, a federal holiday in the U.S. "It adds unpredictability at an uncertain time in Haiti’s election process."

Late Thursday night, Crowley commented on Aristide. "We do not doubt President Aristide’s desire to help the people of Haiti. But today Haiti needs to focus on its future, not its past."

I usually donâ€™t get that excited about sites like this but about.me does a great job of creating personal website/contact pages that professionally pulls together weblogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, and other web services into one page with a user defined URL which makes it perfect for your Twitter bio, a business card, or an email signature. Itâ€™s free (although the pro option has more design options). For me, it combines both ease of use and the ability to easily personalize and express yourself online.

On the 27th I went to Best Buy to take a look at DSLRâ€™s on sale. I didnâ€™t see any DSLRs but while I was there, I saw that Koodo had dropped their price on Blackberry Curves to $150 and no contract. I had thought about getting a LG Rumor 2 this year but after looking into it, we decided to get the Curve. I had been quite happy with Virgin but I have had technical problems with my account for two years and it was getting worse. While Virginâ€™s tech support and customer service staff have been really helpful, they still could not fix the problem so I finally decided to make the move.

I took the phone home and started to set it up. Here is how I put it together.

The first thing I did was get my Curve set up to our wifi connection in the house. That wasnâ€™t working that well. Then I realized my router was about a billion years old (it was a 801b router) and it needed an upgrade. Since my new router was on my desk, it was pretty easy to upgrade. The Curve, my iPod Touch, and our notebook suddenly worked a lot faster. I upgraded my old routerâ€™s firmware and will give it Computers for Kids and if they donâ€™t want it, it can go to SARCAN.

Here is are the apps that made their way onto it over the last couple of days.

Utilities

Blackberry App World | How does this not come preinstalled? Seriously. Itâ€™s like Apple not installing iTunes or an App Store on their iPhones.

All the time we spend looking at repetitive posts and photos from people we already know, could be spent instead on the Web meeting new people who are interested in the same things we are. In other words, making cooler friends. Ambient Findability, as I like to call it, means that what (and who!) we find changes who (and what!) we become. Enabling that is what has always made the Web great.

So, in the spirit of One Web and Ambient Findability, Iâ€™m asking Facebook on behalf of all Web citizens to give us the benefits of being able to just look at things online without being tracked by you. Give us the option to treat Facebook like every other part of the Web, whenever we want, and I assure you it will benefit us all.

Give us an easy one-click way to truly and totally disconnect from Facebook Connect whenever we want. Iâ€™ll still spend just as much time on Facebook, I promise! But now I wonâ€™t have to see my friendsâ€™ faces every time I look up a restaurant review on Yelp, read the news on the New York Times, or wait for external modules to load on TechCrunch. Itâ€™s just an option, and an option confers valueâ€¦ Iâ€™m sure the vast majority of users love Facebook Connect and will continue to use it. But having the option to return the rest of One Web to its pre-Facebook statusâ€”useful but not fundamentally socialâ€”would be the best gift that Zuck could give back to the Web.

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This is a weblog about urban issues, technology, & culture published by Jordon Cooper since 2001. You can read about me and the site here and if you are looking for one of my columns in The StarPhoenix, you can find them here.